In Krakow I decided to have Chinese food for dinner. Or at least the Polish approximation of Chinese food... After dinner I went back to the train station to catch my night train back to Germany. And that's when things got annoying. The trip up until that point had worked out really well: trains were caught, hotels found, destinations visited, weather fine (true it rained a bit in Auschwitz, but the gloom was sort of fitting).
But now, at my train, the conductor seemed to be saying that my ticket was not good. Well, not that it was no good, but that it didn't cover the part of the journey from Krakow to the German border. Um, yes it does, I fruitlessly argued. I showed him the itinerary that the Deutsche Bahn agent in Hamburg had printed out for me, where we discussed that I needed a train from Hamburg to Warsaw (having transferred in Hannover), Warsaw to Suwalki, Suwalki to Warsaw, Warsaw to Krakow, and Krakow to Hamburg with a change in Berlin. I could demonstrate that it was the intent of both parties – me to purchase, and her to sell me, a ticket valid for that itinerary. But no dice. I asked him to infer that it would have made no sense at all for me to have a ticket with a huge hole in it – why would I have bought a ticket that covered almost the entire loop but not all of it? Especially since there was no need to buy the Suwalki parts in Germany – it was the international parts that were most important to purchase earlier. But no dice there either, and in fact he said I was lucky they let me travel from Warsaw to Krakow because he didn't think the ticket was good for that part either.
European train tickets are a bit opaque. The way it generally works is that you buy a ticket that covers traveling the distance, but not a specific seat. For a specific seat you make a reservation. For a seated train it's usually a nominal cost, and has the advantage of meaning you get a seat no matter how crowded the train. For some trains though reservations are optional, for others mandatory, and for others they aren't possible at all. For a night train they are mandatory, at least if you want a bed, because you have to pay extra for that. So I had my couchette all reserved and paid for, that part was no problem. Yet still he was telling me that, though the agent had sold me a couchette, she had not remembered to sell me a ticket?
The complication was twofold: that it had been a complicated itinerary, and that it had been significantly discounted based on German rail promotions. The problem with the former is that the conductor couldn't figure out from what was written on the ticket that it covered this particular train. He said it didn't, and compared it to another ticket which had different markings on it. I can't account for the different markings, but I still insist my ticket was valid. But he further didn't believe it was because the ticket was cheaper than he thought it should be. I tried explaining the promotions involved, but no luck there either. In the end, the only way I was going to get to take the train was to buy another ticket from him. I scrounged 15 euros and 7 zloty and got on with my journey.
You may be asking yourself, I can tell, what language did this conversation take place in? The answer is Polish, a language I don't speak. Fortunately, a girl had come upon me and offered to translate. She was very nice and very insistent in making my arguments to the conductor. The whole thing stretched about an hour (we continued once the train was moving) and she was very persistent, but in the end the argument was lost.
Upon arriving in Berlin I had two hours to spend, so I tried complaining to Deutsche Bahn. But they told me to wait until Hamburg since I still needed the ticket for the last part of the trip. Instead I went to Alexanderplatz, a place I recognized being in about 9 years ago. It looks different now, with all the construction they've done. If it weren't for the TV tower I might not have recognized it.
Meanwhile, back at Berlin Ostbahnhof, I made what I thought was an incredible discovery: Dunkin Donuts. And not just Dunkin Donuts, but chocolate creme filled, which I can't even reliably find in the US, not even in Boston where there's a Dunkin Donuts every 50 feet...
The rest of the journey back was uneventful, and back at the station in Hamburg where I'd bought my ticket I went in to complain about the problem. The woman said the ticket should have been valid, and couldn't explain why the conductor didn't accept it. We filled out a form and it will go to Berlin, where perhaps they will decide to refund my 17 euros. I'll believe it when I see it, but that's not really the operative detail here. What is important is that I EXPLAINED THE WHOLE THING IN GERMAN!!!! And she understood!
I had been worried, before my trip, that going somewhere with a different language was just going to confuse me. But it seems instead to have loosened up the inner-workings of my brain and made the German possible. Being in Poland and only knowing about seven words of Polish (all of which I learned while there) contrasted mightily with being in Germany where I am vastly more literate, and can speak entire sentences. So I think my trip was a good thing for my German language skills and didn't confuse me at all.
Attending my French course immediately upon arrival, however...